Map and Mod Wiki/Movie Tool Manual
Nota Bene The WIC Movie Maker Tool is not an official consumer-released tool, and as such not regarded as a part of the retail version of World in Conflict. The tool was originally developed for internal purposes only, and it has not undergone retail-class QA testing. There may be issues or bugs. The access to the tool is for free (and for fun), but please remember that it is classified as “un-supported” and that Massive Entertainment/Sierra Entertainment are not obliged to support this tool and/or the features that come with it. Hardware Requirements You do not need any specific hardware for the Movie Maker Tool to work. The Movie Maker Tool works on any version of World in Conflict: Alpha, Beta, Demo or Retail. If you use the Movie Maker Tool to record an in-game sequence you can create movies with higher graphic settings than your computer would normally be able to run when playing. How to Install The Movie Maker Tool is included in the World in Conflict retail version. To activate it you must start wic.exe with the command line option –console. This is most easily achieved by creating a Windows shortcut to wic.exe and adding –console to the end of the target line. You might also want to create a wicautoexec.txt with the appropriate commands to be able to reach them more easily. This file is a normal text document and should be created in your local user ‘World in Conflict’ folder. (The text file must be called “wicautoexec.txt” or it will not function) Some useful commands to add in this file are: *Bind ctrl+z time.scale 0 //pause time with ctrl+z key *Bind ctrl+x time.scale 0.2 //slow motion time *Bind ctrl+c time.scale 1 //normal time *Bind ctrl+v time.scale 5 //fast forward time *Camerafreedom 1 //allow camera to move higher/lower than normally allowed Setup To activate the Movie Maker Tool, bring down the console (by pressing tilde key twice, once more to remove it again) and write Cincamnew Filename is where you enter the name of the file that will contain your recorded camerapath. This will activate the tool and bind up a lot of keys to different functions in the tool. Feature Overview The Movie Maker Tool is mainly intended to record smooth camera paths that can be used when recording videos of World in Conflict games. This is accomplished by letting the user place camera control points in time and space and then having the tool interpolate between these, using spline curves. The tool can also add some special effects (like rumble) to the camera. Using the Tool Normal usage scenario We have mainly used this tool to create smooth camera movements for video recording of parts of recorded games, i.e. replays. The most common work-flow is described here: #Create/get the recorded game #View it once or more to figure out which parts you want to record to video and roughly how you want the camera to move there #Start viewing it again and activate the Movie Maker Tool #At the correct time pause the game (ctrl-z if using the wicautoexec above) #Move the camera to the correct position and heading and press the ‘I’ key to create a camera control point. #Adjust the control points with the keys described below if necessary #Let time go forward a while (ctrl-x for slow motion, ctrl-c for normal time) #When a good amount of time has passed, you can create a new command point by pausing the game again (ctrl-z) #Place a new control point with the ‘I’ key. #Repeat 6-9 until you have covered what you want to record #Save the camera path with the ‘F8’ key #Load the World in Conflict recording again #Use Cincamload to load the camera path #The camera path will start executing at the correct time in the demo. If you are using the built-in video recorder, activate it with the ‘.’ key at that time. #When the segment is over, deactivate the video recorder with the ‘.’ key again. Keys When the tool is activated the following keys are bound. It might be a good idea to make sure that they aren’t been bound to any other function in the game. F5 executes current path F6 shows current path (needs to be on for editing) F7 reload current path from file F8 saves current path to file F10 removes gui Select control point with lmb pageup selects the next control point pagedown selects the previous control point del deletes the selected control point num 2,8,4,6,3.9 moves selected control point num 5 switch ‘look at’ mode for selected control point num+ move selected control point to a later point in time num-''' move selected control point to earlier in time '''arrow keys rotates the camera ‘look at’ if it’s of a ‘position look at’ type (not forward or unit viewing) num /* changes banking at selected control point num , resets banking at selected control point home zooms camera in at selected control point end zooms camera out at selected control point insert resets zoom at selected control point i''' is the most common choice for adding a new control point. Pressing ”i” adds a new control point looking in the same direction as the camera is facing '''u adds a new control point looking at the currently selected unit, regardless of which way the camera is facing. (Make sure you do not accidentally de-select the unit at any time while creating a path of this type) o''' adds a new control point looking directly forward along a path, i.e. it forces the camera to face perfectly forward along the direction of the path. (With ”i” the camera can rotate around it’s own axis and even look backwards while still moving forward along the path). These commands will add the new control point immediately after the currently selected one, i.e. if you have selected the last control point the command will insert a new one, but if you have selected a control point in the middle of an existing path, the new control point will appear between the selected control point and the next control point. (Selecting control points is done with left mouse button and page up/down) '''y toggles between two different ways of calculating path-speed. The default setting means that the time passed between two control points is equivalent to the time passed between creating them. The other option means that the tool automatically uses a speed equivalent of 2 seconds between each control point created, regardless of the distance between them and the time passed between creating them. j''' switches between three types of splines for interpolating between control points '''num 0 switches between looped and non-looped replay p''' pauses playback of path '''k moves backward in playback l moves forward in playback Console commands The following World in Conflict console commands are related to the Movie Maker Tool * cincamload to load a camera path * cincamnew to create a new path with default save to filename * cincamsaveas save path with a new filename * cincamdisable disable campath tool until next new/load Related are also the commands to control the built-in video recorder * VideoRecordChooseCompressor <0/1> Sets if the game will ask you to assign a specific video codec or choose an uncompressed one (default 0) * VideoRecordOnlyWorld <0/1> Sets if the video recorder should only record the world graphics or what is presented on screen (including gui elements, etc). Note that some movies are actually rendered outside the world and will need everything to be recorded in order to be visible (default 0) * VideoRecordToTGA <0/1> Specify if videos should be recorded to an avi or a series of TGA files (default 0) * VideoRecordingFps Sets the FPS that the video is recorded in (default 30) * VideoRecordingStart Start recording video to a filename, default path is the program install directory. * VideoRecordingStop Stops recording video The last two are automatically bound to the ‘.’ key when the Movie Maker Tool is active. File only commands If you want to string several camera paths together you can do this by ending the file names before the suffix with _ _ etc. For example file_1.txt file_2.txt This only works if the paths are stacked up in immediate sequence, i.e. no time can lapse between the different camera-paths. There are also some functions in the tool that can only be reached by inserting the commands for them directly into the camera-path file. This is structured like an xml file. The file contains a number of statements. To find the correct place in the file to insert your command you will have to count the time in the earlier statement and then insert the command after enough time has passed. You might also have to manually split a statement into two to be able to control where exactly to insert a command. The commands that can only be added manually to the file are: // shakes the camera position for a set duration of seconds using a sin wave of ‘hz’ hertz multiplied with x y z. If fade is 1 it will fade out toward zero when time is running out. //shakes the camera rotation for ‘duration’ seconds using a sin wave of ‘hz’ hertz multiplied with heading and pitch. If fade is 1 it will fade out toward zero when time is running out //shakes randomly for ‘duration’ seconds with a fade effect towards the end of the shake. It might affect both pos and rot depending on strength. Any number of shakes can be superimposed on one another. //applies warfilter for duration seconds //camera orbits unit id at distance Caveats Sound is not recorded with the built-in video recorder Since a demo/replay can’t be moved backwards in time it can be hard to visualize how changing the time of camera control points will impact the view. Movies and camera paths are by default saved to your World in Conflict installation folder. Make sure you have write access there. The WIC Movie Maker Tool is an unsupported feature-set, originally developed for internal purposes only. Category:Map and Mod Wiki/Movie tool